The present invention relates to a remote monitor alarm system in which power supply and alarm conditions of communication terminal equipment installed at remote sites are monitored and detected by a plurality of remote terminal units which communicate the conditions to a central monitoring unit.
Many large communication systems employ remote terminal equipment whose operational condition must be monitored at a central location. For example, the Kennedy Space Center utilizes a very large fiber optic communication network in which a plurality of remotely located fiber optic terminals transmit information between a number of points. The terminal equipment consists of pulsed frequency modulation terminal equipment, telco style T1 multiplexers, and standard frequency division multiplexers which are provided by various manufacturers. Many of the signals from this equipment are essential during preparation for a launch of the Space Shuttle. It is therefore imperative that operational problems with the remote terminal equipment be communicated and located quickly. Until now, however, NASA did not have any means by which this could be accomplished. Thus, if a problem occurred with remote terminal equipment in the field, the user of the equipment would have to manually inform the technicians of the situation and then the technicians would have to troubleshoot the problem in the field.
The biggest problem with this prior technique is that the user must be actively using the circuit and be able to troubleshoot the equipment to determine whether the communication link has failed or the user's equipment has failed. This process is time consuming and cannot detect problems in the communication link until it is actually being used which creates further delays.